Former Chief Ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Manohar Lal Khattar are among the prominent state leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party who were inducted into the Narendra Modi-led Union Cabinet on Sunday.
Another former chief minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, was retained as a Union minister.
Modi took oath as the prime minister for the third consecutive term at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
The ministerial portfolios were not announced immediately.
Chouhan served as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh for more than 16 years. He was replaced by Mohan Yadav after the BJP won the Assembly polls in December. In the recently-concluded Lok Sabha election, he was elected from the Vidisha constituency by a margin of more than 8 lakh votes.
Khattar was Haryana’s chief minister from October 2014 to March this year, when he resigned to make way for BJP leader Nayab Singh Saini.
Sonowal became the BJP’s first chief minister in Assam in 2016 and held the post for a full term. He was succeeded by party leader Himanta Biswa Sarma in April 2021 when the Hindutva party retained power in the state. He won the Lok Sabha polls this year from the Dibrugarh seat.
Sonowal served as the minister for ports, shipping and waterways in the National Democratic Alliance’s second term.
The BJP won 240 Lok Sabha seats in the general election, a significant dip from its tally of 303 seats in 2019. A party or alliance requires 272 seats in the 543-member Lower House of Parliament to form a government at the Centre.
With the BJP falling 32 seats short of the majority, it is forming the government with the support of its partners in the National Democratic Alliance. The final tally of the National Democratic Alliance parties is 292 seats.
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